Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

The familiar, solid weight of trusted iron in his right hand did more for Vilon’s humor than anything else he had received over the past week.

He swung his longsword against a hay-stuffed training dummy with a grunt that took all of his air. The steel slashed through the rough burlap, sending a shower of dry straw flying into the air like woodchips splintering off a shattered shield in the heat of a battle.

Stepping into his footing, he followed with an horizontal arc that sliced right through the charcoal-traced smile drawn on the dummy’s face, before ending it through with a swift lunging thrust straight into its belly.

A sharp, white-hot spasm immediately shot across his flank, making him wince and swallow a curse. Yet even that pain felt sweet now that he was back on his two feet. The agony was considerably lighter than it had been before the pungent poultices and bitter concoctions he had been forced to choke down. The drinks had tasted like sour bile, and the steaming plasters had driven him half-mad with a furious itch, but gods be good, he could not deny their magic.

Clearly,the Yarzat knew their trade of blood, both in spilling and stopping it.

He could walk, pivot, and swing without trouble now under normal measure. Only when he overextended, as he had just done with that final thrust, did the old, sleeping dragon in his ribs roar back to life.

”Water, ser?” a bright, familiar voice called out from the edge of the yard.

Vilon turned to find Owen holding out a leather skin-canteen. He took it gratefully, gulping down the refreshing coolness to slake the bone-dry desert of his throat. His left hand throbbed with a dull, sickening ache as he fumbled to press the wooden stopper back into place.

The fingers on his left hand had turned out to be the nastiest wound of the lot. It was hard to wrap his mind around that fact when his side flared like a furnace, yet when the chirurgeon had unbandaged his hand to clean the stitches, the man had noted with a grim grimace how the brigand’s blade had scraped clean against the bone of his pinky.

The medic had confided that the trembling in those fingers might never truly stop, and that the iron, crushing grip of his youth would likely never return, even after the ache subsided.

It could have been worse, Vilon reminded himself, working the stiff fingers into a loose, very loose, fist. A great deal worse.

By the mercy of the five gods, he was right-handed. His left was meant for holding a shield-boss, and that, at least, he could still manage.

He had been all smiles and easy japes when Saron, Selm, Mariol, and the rest of the Hounds squad came to visit his cot,congratulating him on surviving an encounter with the two most powerful men in Oizen, while loudly calling him the grandest fool in the south for turning down a commission in the legions. He had laughed along at every joke that made him the butt of the laughter, smiling warmly as they wished him a speedy mend.

Through it all, Owen had never left his side. His loyal, steadfast, stalwart squire.

Vilon did his best to keep a brave face before the lad, but in the quiet dark of the night, a cold terror crept into his heart. He feared his body was broken beyond repair, that he would never truly master the sword again. During his final years, Vilon’s father had spent every evening cursing his frail joints, howling in agony whenever a cold wind blew through the shutters, all because of a lance-head that had driven through his thigh twenty years prior while serving the then lord of Epietoli, father to the lord of now.

That lingering, bitter pain was why his father had been so quick to anger whenever he lacked a cup of dark ale to drown his senses.

More than once, Vilon had wondered if that same miserable fate awaited him: brittle bones, mangled flesh, crying out against the heat or the cold, perhaps even raising a harsh hand against his own squire when the phantom aches resurfaced, if only for the ugly, pitiful satisfaction of knowing he wasn’t the only one hurting.

No, Vilon swore silently, clutching his sword hilt tighter with his good hand. I would sooner throw myself on my own steel than become that monster.

”How are you feeling, ser?” Owen asked, his bright, clear voice scattering the dark thoughts taking root in Vilon’s chest.

”Better,” Vilon said, offering a genuine smile as he wiped the sweat from his forehead with his tunic sleeve. ”I can feel the strength returning. In no time at all, we shall resume your lessons.”

”Thank you, ser! But please, do not rush on my account,” Owen insisted, his eyes shining. ”Mariol was kind enough to let me spar with some of the legionnaires while you rested. The boys from the Third were the fiercest, ser! I sparred with a few of my old friends from the Bastion, and you wouldn’t believe how they move! That halberd swings in their hands as if it were a third arm!”

The boy recounted the bout with a breathless, infectious excitement, stepping back to mimic the stance. ”I threw my shield up high to catch an overhead strike, and before I could even blink, the fellow spun the shaft and caught me flush in the ribs with the iron butt! I couldn’t even get close enough to take a swing with my blunted steel before I had to yield to his point!”

Vilon nodded, visualizing the bout clearly. He had watched the Aracinea drill in the lower yards; they were terrifyingly agile, possessed a reach that dwarfed any longsword, and wielded enough momentum in their swings to splinter a oak shield if a poor sod tried to play too defensively. They were an opponent Vilon was in no hurry to test his own steel against.

”They all said I was improving, ser!” Owen added proudly, puffing out his chest.

A quite warmth spread in his chest, as proud of the lad’s progress as if the skill were his own. ”Then it seems my early lessons were not entirely wasted on your thick skull. Though I fear we shall have to change the nature of our training very soon.”

Owen tilted his head, puzzled. ”Why is that?”

”Well, so far I have only taught you how to fight unarmored, or at best in patched mail and a dented helm,” Vilon smiled softly. ”Now? Well... our style will have to adapt to heavier iron.”

Owen blinked, his jaw dropping slightly. ”Heavier iron?”

The smile on Vilon’s face widened into a rare, genuine grin. When Lord Edric had pressed him to name his reward, the hedge knight had asked merely for a bit of iron and a mount for his boy.

Vilon had secretly hoped the Warden might spare a secondhand coat of rusted mail and a sensible, sure-footed riding palfrey from the quartermaster’s surplus.

’’A warrior’s metal ought not lack to one’s heart’’ He told him when Vilon made his desire known.

The very next morning, an outrider from the command stables had delivered a magnificent, deep-chested bay mare with a coat like spun silk and eyes sharp with intelligence, a beast far too fine for a simple squire, yet given without a second thought. Mind it didn’t quite possess the fierce, unbroken war-horse pedigree of Chestnut, but she was a prize nonetheless.

Behind the mare then close came a master armorer, flanked by two apprentices burdened with leather measuring straps, iron calipers. Edric had not sent old scrap for iron either. He had ordered full, tailored suits of articulated plate for them both, not just for Owen, but for Vilon as well.

In a single fortnight, Vilon had been transformed from a beggar-knight with a torn mail shirt and a dented helm into a fully harnessed, double-mounted knight of noble presence.

And all because he had simply done the right thing down at the creek...was this the way of the gods to commend him on his true path?Was there yet indeed more that awaited him and that would need of harsher iron to face?

A small, fat robin fluttered down from the canopy as he mused on that , it perched atop the hay-stuffed dummy and pecking at the exposed burlap as if it were a ripe melon. Vilon watched the little creature, letting his eyes rest on its movements as he spoke.

”Fighting in full plate is an entirely different beast, lad,” Vilon instructed, gesturing with his sword-hand. ”When you’re wrapped in tailored steel, you no longer need to waste energy flinching from every glance or wild swing. You learn to parry only the blows that carry true danger, to the joints, the visor, and the throat. Your main concern becomes your footing. You must never allow an opponent to tackle or throw you. Once a man in full harness is pinned to the mud, getting back to his feet is a grueling ordeal. Your weight becomes your greatest weapon in a charge, but can likewise be your death if you lose your balance.”

He shifted his weight, tapping his own chest. ”Moreover, you learn to use your armor as a shield. Instead of stepping back, you catch a glancing blow on your pauldrons or cuisses, deadening the enemy’s momentum so you can drive your own steel home. Of course, that means conditioning your body to the burden. You will learn to ride, sprint, and gods willing, even swim in the iron before I am done with you.You’ll have to learn how it is like to have another body on top of you’’

Owen listened to every word, utterly mesmerized, a broad, foolish smile plastered across his young face.

”Though I suppose,” Vilon added with a quiet chuckle, scratching his smal beard, ”we shall first have to find an armorer’s boy to teach us how to lace the damn plates together. I, for one, haven’t the faintest idea how to buckle the back-straps...never owned such iron”

Then the small robin burst into a sudden, sweet song, purerer and softer than any maidne’s song. Both knight and squire stopped as they heard that.

The bird sang, and then the camp answered it back with a deafening, metallic roar.

Aooooooo-uuuuuuuuuu!

The low, resonant blast of a war-horn shattered the morning quiet, echoing off the surrounding hills. Vilon and Owen whipped their heads toward the sound, watching as dozens of legionnaires spilled out of nearby tents half-dressed, their faces flushed with the same startled confusion.

The little robin flew off in terror, vanishing into the tall pines.

Before the echoes of the first horn could die, a second horn blared from the eastern watchtower, higher and sharper.

Aooooooo-uuuuuuuuuu!

In an instant, the lazy rhythm of the camp dissolved into pure frenzy, not quite like that of battle, but close.

The bare-chested men who had just stumbled into the lanes sprinted back inside their tents, emerging heartbeats later struggling into leather doublets and hauling heavy mail coats over their heads. Subcenturios began bellowing orders, their harsh voices cutting through the chaos as the metallic clatter of thousands of men buckling iron filled the air.

Vilon reached out, snagging a passing legionnaire by his leather shoulder-guard as the man hurried past with a bundle of javelins. ”Hold, excuse me , hold! What is happening?”

The soldier looked Vilon up and down, glaring at the hedge knight’s casual tunic before violently shrugging his arm free. ”To the square! All cohorts assemble at the central square!With what legion you on?You better move or the latrines will be for you”

”Wait!” Vilon called out, stepping into the man’s path before he could vanish into the rushing tide. ”Why? What has occurred?”

The legionnaire stared at him as if Vilon were a complete sod , as he run off.

”Are you simple? The trackers came back! They’ve found it!’’

’’Found what?’’ Vilon shouted, but the questioned remained unsang and unaswered, except for the third and final horn that came to its end.